Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce an exhibition with Matthew Kirk (b. 1978, Ganado, AZ; lives and works in Queens, NY) on view in our project space, organized in collaboration with FIERMAN, New York.

In a new series of wall-based assemblages, Kirk wryly interrogates Native American visual culture and his relationship to his Navajo heritage and identity. Integrating industrial materials such as strips of tar roofing paper and commercial steel fencing, Kirk approaches the history of Navajo weaving through a personal and practical lens. The surface of each is marked with abstract symbols, glyphs and doodles, in addition to lighting motifs and geometric patterning, that become an evolving and improvisational lexicon with shifting meaning.

The largest weaving, There’s a Flood Stronger Than a Church, features a symphonic array of symbols and motifs that crisscross one another, repeating rhythmically then congealing into larger forms. Graphic shapes and lines energetically intersperse with familiar forms of houses, birds, human figures, lightning, and trees to form a narrative tapestry of memory and identity, past and present.

Matthew Kirk (b. 1978, Ganado, AZ) lives and works in Queens, New York.  He has had solo and group exhibitions at FIERMAN, NY (2021 and 2018); Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton (2019); and Louis B. James, NY (2012, 2015).  He was a 2019 recipient of the Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Contemporary Native American Art.  His work is in the collection of the Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN; Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY; OZ Art, Crystal Bridges, AR; and the Forge Collection, Tagkanic, NY; among others.